


A Different Sort of Grace

by BurningTea



Series: Season 9 Fic [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 09, BAMF!Cas, Cas gets some damn self respect, Cas never makes it to the Bunker, Cas' self worth, Fae & Fairies, M/M, but he's still got it, human!Cas, seems to have acquired Fey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 10:59:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7434157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel didn't need saving by Sam and Dean after he fell. He went a different route. Dean isn't sure what to make of it, but he likes the wardrobe.</p><p>In which Castiel is found by someone who knows what it's like to have to navigate the human world when you aren't one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the photo in this [post](https://66.media.tumblr.com/94dd2258e3b4383cb7b45f925ce76863/tumblr_o8ksgkkAM41vv43pto1_500.jpg) and by thoughts I've been having about Cas meeting someone other than April, earlier on in his graceless state, and the difference that might have made.

Cas never makes it to the Bunker. 

What with Ezekiel, and Kevin freaking out about his mom, and keeping Crowley on lock-down, Dean doesn’t get his head together to realize it for way longer than it should have taken. 

“You heard from Cas at all?” he asks Sam, tapping at the edge of the library table with one finger like he isn’t totally focused on Sam’s response.

Sam’s confusion is thick enough to be felt in his pause before answering, and his words pick carefully over some abyss Dean is hoping they can keep pretending isn’t there. 

“No. I figured he’d call you. Are you saying you haven’t heard from him at all?”

“Not since the hospital,” Dean says. “I told him to haul ass here, but I guess angels don’t really get what that means or something.”

“He isn’t an angel now, though,” Sam says.

Dean’s tapping falters, and he feels the muscles in his beck and shoulders tense. Tense more. 

“Yeah. I get that.”

He’s not sure if Cas does, though. Cas said he knew he needed to eat and drink, or at least he said he’d be fine when Dean pointed that out, but that doesn’t mean the guy really has managed. He might have fallen over in a ditch somewhere from hunger and exhaustion, and be nothing more than-

No. He’s not going to think like that. He isn’t. Cas is a big boy. He’ll get in touch if he needs them.

He isn’t sure whether it might hurt worse if Cas doesn’t need them, and pushes that thought down, too. 

“You think he might have run into trouble?” Sam asks, and there’s coiled readiness there, an unstated intention to get out to the car and set off driving if Dean says they need to. 

Dean keeps forgetting Cas is Sam’s family, too.

“When doesn’t he?” Dean asks. 

But he doesn’t have any leads, and he can’t work out where Cas might be. 

Dean makes it three more days before he picks up his duffel and Sam nods at him, not needing to hear it in words.

They drive to where Dean thinks Cas landed, and ask around, and find nothing. 

Oh, some guy remembers giving a lift to a dazed fellow who didn’t seem to be off whatever high he’d reached to be wandering around in the middle of nowhere with no money, but they hear that from someone at a diner, who only heard it from a waitress who was on duty that evening but is away visiting family now, and the trail is long cold before they try to find it. 

Dean picks up a bottle of jack at the store that night, and Sam just looks away with a frown. 

The Bunker seems emptier than it was before when they get back, even with Kevin around. Dean spends more time than he wants to admit checking news reports on the routes Cas might have taken to them, but he digs up nothing. 

A vampire case comes up in a town two states over, and it’s as they’re patching up a gash in Dean’s shoulder and Sam’s wondering aloud how he avoided a wound of his own with the way he got thrown against a wall that Ezekiel shows up.

It’s in the straightening of Sam’s spine and the lifting of his head, and Dean groans.

“What do you want now?” he asks.

“I have heard you worrying about Castiel,” Ezekiel says. 

Dean freezes. Angel radio. He should have thought of that. His mouth is dry when he replies.

“And? You picked something up I should know about?”

Ezekiel adjust Sam’s head, and Dean wants to punch him for using a gesture so much like one of Cas’.

“No. I have heard nothing of Castiel. If he’s still alive, he must have found somewhere to hide. The remainder of the Host is searching for him, but they have no indication as to where he is, either.”

Perhaps something of Dean’s reaction makes it through that angelic stick-up-the-butt that Ezekiel rocks so hard, because he narrows Sam’s eyes and speaks more softly.

“Do not worry, Dean. Castiel has always been a master tactician. If anyone can evade the Host, it is him.”

Somehow, Dean doesn’t find that as comforting as the angel seems to think he will. When Sam’s allowed to take back the wheel a few moments later, he frowns and asks Dean if he wants a beer. Dean ends up taking eight. 

 

************************

 

Dean doesn’t forget about Cas. Not exactly. But the guy’s had the habit of vanishing for weeks or months at a stretch for pretty much the whole time Dean’s known him. It’s hard to stay at high alert full time. Dean knows. He’s had the Devil on his radar, and still found he couldn’t keep up constant vigilance. 

Besides, cases come up, a Knight of Hell won’t stay dead, and the angels are killing each other. Turf War: Celestial Edition. It’s no fun for anyone. 

He still checks for news every morning, when he can. He still asks around if he gets a sniff of a lead. Three or four times he takes off across the country only to find it’s not Cas at all. Sam pats him on the shoulder, brings him a drink. He makes Dean coffee when he sobers up and grimaces at the bottles, but he doesn’t tell Dean to stop. 

Kevin takes on more of the research and phone work. He loses some of his frantic, pinched look now he isn’t staring at a tablet all the time, but he’s still upset about his mom. Dean promises the kid he’ll look for her, too, but the look on Kevin’s face says how much he thinks will come from it. 

Kevin doesn’t tell Dean to stop drinking, either, but he leaves the room when Dean starts.

Ezekiel only turns up to tell Dean Sam needs more healing. He doesn’t react when he finds Dean drunk off his ass, not even a little bit. 

It’s yet another shift in what’s normal, and Dean tells himself it could be a lot worse.

 

**********************

 

Sam nudges Dean, almost making him spill his coffee.

“What?” Dean asks. Well, snaps. 

They still haven’t figured out what’s been killing people and Dean’s had a headache dragging at him for hours. This town is full of the kind of people who think painting plates is a great weekend activity, and it’s setting his teeth on edge.

“Does he look familiar to you?” Sam asks, squinting up the street.

Dean rolls his eyes, but follows Sam’s gaze. He catches a glimpse of a guy in a dark leather jacket and equally dark, tight jeans disappear into a diner. Something lurches in Dean’s chest, but he flattens whatever it is. By this point, it’s almost automatic.

“Yeah. So?”

Sam gives him a look, and Dean cuts his brother off before he can open his mouth.

“No. No, come on. It’s not him, Sam. It’s never him.”

“It might be,” Sam says. “Weirder things have happened.”

Hard to argue that one, but they’ve hardly ever been the things Dean wants. They’ve especially not been the kind of things he wants the way he wants Cas back.

“It’s been over six months,” Dean says.

It was seven between watching Cas walk into that lake and finding him living a life without his memories, but this time Dean’s been looking and hasn’t found him. Besides, Dean spoke to Cas after the fall, and the guy still had his head intact then. As much as Cas ever has his head in one piece. 

Dean has wondered, in the pit of the night, whether Cas just decided it was all too much and hid himself up in the mountains someplace, or in a commune or some shit. 

“We should check it out,” Sam says decisively. “We need to track down that dancer.”

That’s another thing about this case: one of the only witnesses is a dancer, but she doesn’t even bother to do it for a living. She’s some dippy, artsy type no doubt, and Dean doesn’t much want to speak with her about fairies and flowers and star signs and all that crap. He’s met fairies. He isn’t in any mood to pretend they’re cute.

“You think she’ll be in a diner, Sam?” he asks. “Really? Dancers live on cotton wool and carrot sticks. Everyone knows that.”

“The guy back at that art shop said she eats at the diner, so apparently no-one told her.”

Sam sets off without waiting to see if Dean’s following, and Dean scowls at Sam’s back. And follows him.

This is a stupid waste of their time. Some out-of-it dancer isn’t going to have anything useful to say, and if Sam really thinks that Cas would be wearing tight black jeans and-

The bell on the door clatters more than rings, but Dean barely hears it. 

Cas is wearing tight black jeans and a black leather jacket. His hair’s styled, peaked up a little in the middle, and he’s leaning on the counter, his body language closer to lounging than Dean’s ever seen it. 

Cas is here. 

Cas is here, and someone’s introduced him to the concept of being hotter than Hell. 

Dean feels like his whole body’s shut down.

“Cas?” Sam says, blocking Dean’s view for a split second as Sam crosses to the counter.

When Dean can see him again, Cas has straightened up and is looking Sam up and down. It’s a considering look, slower and measured in a whole different way to the soul-searching angel stare. 

“Sam,” Cas says, as though they saw each other the day before. 

He leans again, resting on his elbow this time with his hand hanging off the edge of the counter. It’s relaxed the way a cat relaxes when it means to move quickly very soon, all controlled grace and power, and Dean can’t for the life of him work out where Cas learned that.

“What brings you to town?” Cas asks.

“There’s been a string of strange deaths,” Sam says, but Dean’s pretty sure it’s mostly automatic. Sam sounds slightly dazed. “We’re trying to track down the witness. A Kelly Ashfield. She-”

“We took care of it,” Cas says, waving his free hand. “Kelly told me right away. You don’t have to stick around.”

It’s the jolt of surprise that has Dean moving. He reaches Sam’s side and pretends not to care that Cas avoids his eyes. 

“You took care of it?” he asks. The rising note at the end is enough for Sam to shoot him a warning look, but Dean powers through. “You took care of it?”

“Yes,” Cas says. He still doesn’t look at Dean. 

“You… Cas, you’re human now. You can’t go around taking on monsters! And with a civilian-”

“Kelly is very athletic,” Cas says.

Which derails Dean’s brain completely.

Sam steps in again, pulling out the bar stool next to Cas and sinking onto it. Maybe he’s trying to defuse the tension in the air.

“That’s great, Cas,” Sam says, and doesn’t elaborate on what, exactly, is great. “But even if you’ve finished the hunt for us, that doesn’t mean we’re going off without you.”

“Then you’ll have to stay here forever,” Cas says, “because I’m not leaving.”

And he pushes away from the counter, still with that grace. It’s a grace Dean’s realizing is nothing like the grace he had as an angel, which was more about power and drive and something otherworldly. This is a grace grounded in flesh. 

“Cas-” he starts.

He catches Cas’ arm, and the guy turns such a look on him that he lets go at once.

“I have things I need to do,” Cas says. “I’ll see you around.”

He doesn’t sound entirely on board with the idea. Dean watches Cas leave, and he has no idea what to think about anything. About anything except someone should have poured Cas into those jeans a long time ago.

“We leaving?” Sam asks. 

“Fuck no,” Dean says, and that, at least, doesn’t need thought.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam isn’t sure why they don’t go after Cas right away. It would probably be a disaster, chasing the guy down the street when he’s acting like he’d rather they weren’t there, but ‘disaster’ pretty much sums up Dean and Cas’ history. 

He isn’t going to call it a relationship until Dean tells him there is one. Not a romantic relationship, anyway. 

“You sure you want to do this?” Sam asks.

The afternoon sun slants through the windows of the bed and breakfast they’re staying in, and hits Dean right across the face as he paces back and forth. There isn’t as much room in this place as there would be in a motel, but this town is strangely lacking in motels.

“We’ve given him the whole morning to get his head on straight,” Dean says.

“Yeah, no. I get that,” Sam says, even though he doesn’t get it. Not really. Caution and respectful distance aren’t phrases he normally associates with Dean. “But why go at it this way? Cas already said the case is closed.”

“And you trust him on that?” Dean asks.

“You don’t?”

Dean doesn’t answer at first, turning and heading back across the room. When he reaches the dresser again he stops and leans his hands on it, his head bowed. Even without seeing his face, Sam can guess what his brother’s expression is.

“He’s fresh off the boat, here, Sam.”

“Not at hunting,” Sam says. “Not really. Fine, he’s new to doing it as a human, but Cas has been fighting for longer than America’s existed. And I don’t just mean the USA. I mean the continent. You really think he’s wrong about this?”

“He can be wrong,” Dean says, as though that’s an answer.

Sam tries another approach. 

“If this Kelly is Cas’ friend, isn’t it going to piss Cas off? Are we wanting to piss Cas off?”

“He’s already pissed about something,” Dean says. “You heard the way he spoke to us. To me. That sound like a calm Cas to you?”

Sam tries to marshal his thoughts into words, but they refuse. It makes his head swim, trying to sort out what he’s feeling and what Dean’s feeling and what Cas is feeling. He isn’t sure what to make of Cas’ reaction earlier, but winding the guy up even more doesn’t seem like the best idea.

“I’ve seen what Cas can do when he’s angry,” Sam says. “Remember running off to say ‘Yes’ to Michael? Because I remember the state you were in when you got back.”

Dean waves his hand, his lip curling as though what Sam is saying is too stupid to be worth bringing up.

“Different times,” he says. “Cas couldn’t take me now even if he wanted to.”

Sam didn’t really mean Cas might try to beat Dean up. There are other kinds of extreme reactions, and if Cas has shown them anything over the years, it’s that he’s not afraid to dive right into extreme reactions. But Dean isn’t listening, and Sam wants to work out what’s happened with Cas as much as Dean does. If this is the way Dean wants to play it, then fine. 

“Let’s go,” Sam says. “You want to do it this way, let’s just do it.”

He catches Dean’s flash of annoyance, but screw it. Sam’s going to be picking up the crap here, he can just feel it. However this goes, if Dean doesn’t end up with Cas back at the Bunker, with them, and happy about it, Sam’s going to be the one trying to monitor Dean’s alcohol intake without letting Dean be aware. He’s going to be the one moving bottles of the hard stuff out of the way and replacing it with beer, because at least Dean doesn’t tend to go so hard with that. Normally. 

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Sure.”

He’s almost silent on the way over. Whenever Sam glances at him, Dean’s jaw is tense and his eyes are fixed on the road. If he runs into Cas in this mood, with Cas apparently done with letting Dean roll over him, it isn’t going to be pretty.

They’re at the place quickly, a studio they didn’t find earlier because it’s down a back-street and surrounded by trees. It’s like this Kelly wants to be hidden. 

They hear music through the open windows and Dean heads right inside, not bothering with finding anyone to direct them. Sam follows. 

“Dean?”

Cas’ voice stops Dean dead, his hands clenching and relaxing in a way that tells Sam his brother is making a conscious effort. He just wishes he thought it was an effort to actually be calm and reasonable. Instead, Dean turns to the left, his gaze latching onto something Sam can’t see, and the smile on Dean’s face is the one he throws at demons who think they’ve got the upper hand. 

“There some reason we can’t be here, Cas?” Dean asks.

Sam takes the few steps needed to bring him next to Dean, and finds Cas standing inside a room off the corridor. 

“Cas,” Sam says, in greeting or in warning. He isn’t sure.

Cas flicks his attention to Sam for a moment, but it goes right back to Dean. Of course it does. Whatever’s going on here, Dean pulls at Cas’ focus in a way Sam never can. 

“I told you,” Cas says. “The case is closed. It was a kelpie. We persuaded it to leave.”

“Persuaded?” Dean asks, his voice rising. “Cas, that thing murdered people.”

“That thing,” Cas says, “doesn’t think the way humans do. Why should it suffer for that?”

“Because it was killing people. People!”

Dean smacks the blade of one hand into the palm of the other, as though the only thing holding up Cas’ understanding is force. 

“People aren’t the only things that deserve life,” Cas says.

And he says it flat, an iron track of words set down solid. 

Cas is wearing the same outfit he had on earlier, his hands shoved in the front pockets of his jeans and his stance more casual than it ever was as an angel. He looks about three seconds from leaning on the door-frame. The thrumming tension in the air says that’s not the full story.

“We still want to talk to your friend,” Sam says. “For our notes.”

Dean wants to interrogate this person, Sam knows he does, but Dean’s barely pulled back from that knife edge he was walking after Purgatory. What Dean wants is not automatically the best choice.

Having Cas shift to staring at Sam is less than pleasant. The guy’s lost none of his intensity. He just seems to have channeled it differently. Sam never really noticed before how good looking Cas is, or Jimmy was, and he isn’t sure he wants to notice now. It feels like Cas might have learned to weaponize it.

“If you must,” Cas says, and stalks into the corridor. 

He leads them towards the music, which swells and falls and rises. Through a set of glass doors, Sam finds himself in a room with high windows and mirrors. Cas keeps walking, stepping down a set of steps to the edge of the floorspace, where he leans against the wall and fixes his gaze on the woman using the space.

Sam shares a look with Dean. This must be Kelly. 

She moves with surety, winding her body through the music, and Sam has to admit she can move. Cas was right about her being athletic. He’s hoping Dean’s mind hasn’t gone in the obvious direction with that.

In loose pants and a black T-shirt, she leaves the ground in a spin and lands on her knees, her hair spilling round her face. It’s almost black. The light picks up highlights, and the same light has her skin glowing copper. She rises with the beat, fluid and swift, and Sam finds himself fascinated. He doesn’t get the chance to watch this sort of thing much in their line of work. 

With the last note, she comes to a complete stop, holding a final pose for a moment. She seems to still be lost in the music.

“Kelly,” Cas says.

She drops her raised hand, twists to face Cas, and smiles. It’s bright and inviting and Sam is suddenly very sure he doesn’t want Kelly mad at him. 

“There you are,” she says, heading at Cas and stopping just before she runs into him.

She has to crane her head back to look up at Cas and meet his eyes. There’s no sign she’s noticed Sam or Dean.

“What did you think?” she asks. “Better? Worse?”

Cas shrugs, a move with one shoulder, shifting his whole body in a way that can only be described as languid. 

“It still doesn’t…quite fit,” he says. There’s a pause, and even from the part of Cas’ profile Sam can see, the guy’s face loses some of that intensity, that surety, he’s got now. “I…” Cas stops again, shakes his head. “It doesn’t…the pattern isn’t…”

Frustration colors Cas’ words, and he lifts one hand to his temple.

“It’s the wrong shape,” he says.

Kelly nods, as though that makes sense, and reaches up to pat his cheek. Sam feels Dean bristle. Cas doesn’t react to either of them.

“Do you want the pens?” she asks.

Cas nods.

“Pens?” Dean asks, but he gets no response. 

Sam shrugs when Dean turns to him. Whatever this is, it’s something Cas and Kelly clearly understand, because Kelly pulls a box out of a bag at the side of the room and hands it to Cas with every sign she’s familiar with doing this. A sketchpad follows, and Cas sinks to the floor as Kelly opens the pad and sets it on the ground. She settles cross-legged opposite Cas, and Dean opens his mouth to say something. 

He stops when Sam leans over and presses two fingers to Dean’s forearm. 

Whatever the two of them are doing, Dean being all…Dean about it isn’t going to help. They should watch and take the chance to get a better handle on this.

Within less than a minute, Cas has half of the page covered in symbols. At first, Sam thinks it’s some kind of spell, but something in his brain clicks and the image realigns itself.

“Math?” he asks. “You’re writing equations, Cas?”

Kelly looks up and finally takes notice of them. There’s a smile playing at the edges of her lips, but it puts Sam in mind of a cat playing: claws are a definite possibility. 

“Looming one,” she says, something masquerading as joy in her voice, as though she knows him. “You must be Sam. Which makes the scowling one Dean.”

She tilts her head to the side, pursing her lips and rocking her body back a little. 

“I can see what you mean,” she says, clearly to Cas. 

“About what?” Dean asks.

He doesn’t get an answer.

“Why are you-” Dean starts.

“I see what you mean with this, too,” Kelly says, over him and directed at Cas. She rocks forward and taps at the page. “But how do I map that into movement? We don’t all think in waves, you know.”

Cas glances at her, and to Sam he looks a little out of it, his eyes glazed. It’s just a quick look, and he goes back to drawing, sketching a chart this time, a curving line which rises and falls, with notations added along its length.

Whatever it is, it delights Kelly, who leans in and strokes a hand down Cas’ arm until her fingers reach his. 

“This is beautiful,” she says, voice almost reverent. “I’ll work on it tomorrow.”

“All right, one of you tell me what the Hell is going on,” Dean says, and this time Sam’s hand on his arm doesn’t stop him. “You done with your drawing? Because we have a case to discuss.”

“No,” Cas says, and the distant look in his eyes is gone. 

He snaps the lid back onto the pen and twists his body, rising lithely to his feet. Sam can’t help but notice the way Cas holds the pen. It’s not a million miles away from the way he used to hold his angel blade.

“The case is done with,” Cas says. “You may know more than I do about being human, but you aren’t the only one who knows about the supernatural, Dean.”

The bite of anger is back in his voice. It saddens Sam to think it, but he supposes Cas has reason to be upset. He doesn’t know if the root of it is something Dean and Sam have done, or failed to do, or if Cas is just angry at the universe in general, but the guy’s had a rough deal. 

Dean looks more taken aback.

“What are you-” he gets out.

Kelly slides in front of Cas, and Sam really doubts it helps much when she leans back against the angel. Ex-angel. Cas takes her weight, resting a hand on her hip, and Dean looks about ready to attack.

“You glow,” she says, which…what? “It’s mesmerizing. But it doesn’t mean you can waltz in here and spew shit at my people. Back off.”

It’s said in the same sing-song voice as everything else she’s said, the accent crisp and melodic. Any anger is hidden in the light beat of her words, and it just makes Sam even more wary. 

“Listen, lady,” Dean says, “you might think you’ve got rid of this kelpie, but I’ve had a run in with the faeries before, and they aren’t that easy to control.”

Kelly frowns, grimacing the way someone does when they’re hearing something entirely idiotic and can’t quite believe it.

“Control? You don’t control the Fey. You don’t seek to control the Fey. But I can assure you, that particular kelpie has moved back to its own realm. It was lost, you see. It didn’t need hunting. It just needed a bit of guidance.”

If there’s something loaded in the way she says that, Dean must ignore it. 

“What are you? Some tree-hugging do-gooder? If it kills people, it needs putting down. It’s not a lost puppy.”

“Not all morality or need centers on humanity,” Kelly says, and appears to grow bored of the whole conversation. “You fancy something to eat?”

Dean looks as confused as Sam feels, until he realizes she’s directing the words over her shoulder, her head tipped back against Cas’ collar-bone.

“Sure,” Cas says. 

In a move that almost makes Sam blink, Cas dips his head, resting his cheek on Kelly’s hair. It’s about the most intimate thing Sam’s ever seen Cas do, and he’s doing it right in front of Dean. Does Cas really not know how Dean feels about him? Sam’s never quite dared to bring it up, but the whole damn world seems to know, and wants to throw it in Dean’s face repeatedly, so it’s got to have occurred to Cas. Right?

“You want to invite your friends?” Kelly asks, with a twist on the last word Sam can’t work out.

There’s a pause. Cas watches them both, shifting his stance and winding his arms around Kelly’s waist as he does so. Finally, he shrugs.

“If they promise to behave,” he says. 

Sam just knows he’s going to have to stop Dean from doing something stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to guess what Kelly's deal is.


	3. Chapter 3

Turns out, Kelly has a place out of town, surrounded by even more trees than the dance studio is. 

Dean peers out of the Impala’s window and prepares for whatever the Hell it is he’s going to be confronted with inside. He’s already tense, the feeling of being stretched too far and pressed too tight sending a promise of pain down his neck. His jaw’s going to ache come nightfall, he just knows it.

“You planning on getting out of the car anytime soon?” Sam asks.

“What?” Dean asks, because no way is he admitting he’s been sitting here for almost ten minutes trying to psyche himself up to go inside. “You want to rush in so bad, you go.”

Sam doesn’t roll his eyes, but he manages to give the impression he has. Opening the door, he swings his tall frame out and into the early evening air, and Dean curses his own mind and follows. 

It’s warm, but there’s that crisp edge to things that reminds Dean of frost and apples. 

“What do you make of this girl, anyway?” Dean asks.

“Hard to say,” Sam says. “She seems to care about Cas, so there’s that.”

Dean nods, and doesn’t move.

He’s going to walk up to the house in a moment and knock, but right now he feels the need to settle into his stance and make sure the ground is steady under his feet. There’s something about this whole thing that’s making him feel a tremor’s gone through the world, and his footing isn’t sure.

Maybe it’s just seeing Cas behave the way he is. Maybe it’s just seeing Cas human. 

“Okay, then,” he says, when the weight of Sam’s waiting gets to be too much. “Let’s do this thing.”

A girl opens the door, staring up at them from under corn-colored hair and flitting away with a quick gesture to follow her. She leads them deeper into the house, along a corridor that curves and down steps and Dean loses all sense of where he is.

“This seem normal to you?” he asks Sam, who shrugs.

There’s an edge to the way Sam’s looking around him that suggests he’s uncertain how they should be reacting to the place. Dean isn’t completely alone feeling he ought to be on guard, here.

The girl stops at a door, turning and staring at them in a way kids do sometimes, a way that means Dean has trouble telling if they’re something supernatural or not. Maybe he’s just come up against too many creepy kid monsters in his time. This one has on a pale blue dress and a white ribbon in her hair, and Dean doesn’t need a knife in his hand. He doesn’t. She’s just a kid.

“They in there?” he asks, nodding at the door.

In answer, she reaches out and pushes, and behind the door is a room bathed in light. 

Sam moves first, stepping past the girl and smiling at her. It’s an awkward twist of his lips. He’s seen a lot of creepy kid monsters, too.

Dean follows him, and they find themselves in one of those rooms where the walls and ceiling at more glass than anything, the brickwork pale cream and flanked by pots of greenery. The air in here’s full of the scent of rich life, heady and slow.

“You’ve got an orangery?” Sam asks.

Dean sees Kelly only after she moves. Sam must not have been as distracted. 

She’s over by a table, standing with one hand resting on the table’s edge, and the black pants and top are gone. In their place, she wears a dress which makes Dean think of waterfalls and he has no idea why, except it’s deep blue and looks like it’s floating. 

“I have an orangery,” she says, smiling at Sam. “I find it helps, to be able to sit amongst plant-life. It can be healing.”

“You live in the middle of a forest,” Dean says. “You not got enough plant stuff out there you can commune with or whatever?”

“From what Castiel tells me, you’ve seen proper forests, Dean,” she says, and something in her tone is chiding. “But come, sit at my table. We’ll eat soon. Would you care for a drink, first?”

“Where is Cas?” Dean asks, not moving.

Sam glances at him and heads to the table, but he doesn’t ask for a drink.

“Castiel will be here shortly,” Kelly says. “He had to lie down. Being human takes it out of him.”

“Being…?” Dean shares a look with Sam. “What’s he told you?”

Kelly tilts her head, her eyes narrowing.

“I knew he was a Seraph the moment I first saw him,” she says. “And I know what it’s like to transition to the human world. I’ve seen people do it before. So I knew he needed help. And he needs to adapt. And as part of that he needs to rest when his human body tells him to, something he’s still learning the limits of.”

“He keep going until he falls over?” Dean asks, in spite of the bristling feeling Kelly’s words give him.

He can just imagine Cas refusing to accept what being human means. It’s why he told the guy he’d need to eat and drink and all that crap, in that one phone-call they had. It hurts to think Cas might not have listened.

“What are you?” Sam asks. 

He’s standing only a few feet from Kelly, holding the back of a chair, and she stills, regarding him. It’s a far cry from the movement and grace of earlier, but there’s a kind of control there that makes Dean want to get nearer to Sam. Just in case.

“Castiel’s friend,” she says, as though that’s the end of it.

Any further questions are stopped by footsteps, and Cas appears from between two indoor trees, rubbing at one eye. He looks half asleep, still. He must have swapped out of his jeans and leather jacket, but the black T-shirt and loose black pants he’s wearing aren’t much better for Dean. They aren’t a million miles away from the kind of thing Kelly was wearing earlier, either. 

“You roll right out of bed and come in here, Cas?” Dean asks, gesturing at the hair that’s looking even more like Cas has been up to something sinful than usual.

“Do you have a problem with that?” Cas asks right back.

His tone implies the answer had better be no. Dean goes one better and doesn’t answer at all.

“Should we be worried here, Cas?” Sam asks. “Are we safe?”

At that, Cas frowns, his nose crinkling and his eyes narrowing almost to slits. 

“Kelly won’t harm you,” he says. “You’re safe. Aren’t they?”

Kelly nods, and pulls out a chair, sinking onto it with an elegance that doesn’t seem entirely necessary. 

“I promise you,” she says, “you’re both safe under my roof.”

Sam takes his own seat, and Cas moves to sit at Kelly’s other side, leaving only Dean standing.

“And should we risk eating or drinking?” he asks. “We gonna wind up stuck here as servants or some shit if we risk a bread-roll?”

“Safe means safe,” Kelly tells him, not rising to the bait. “That means your Free Will is protected, too. Come. Sit. Break bread with us and talk. Would you like some wine?”

Cas would let them know if they weren’t safe, if this Kelly couldn’t be trusted. Dean’s sure of it. Almost sure. Okay, so he isn’t certain how much Cas had been changed by becoming human, except to be even damn sexier, somehow, now he’s got his body moving like it’s really his, but that won’t mean Cas would let Dean or Sam be mind-whammied by whatever Kelly is. Because she sure as Hell ain’t human.

“Yeah. Why not?” 

Dean joins them at the table, and takes the glass he’s handed, and watches Cas drink wine. The guy tips the glass and watches the liquid move up the side before he drinks it, like he’s inspecting it for flaws. The way Cas’ fingers curl round the stem makes Dean struggle to push down all those thoughts he has and won’t admit to. 

“So, Cas,” Sam says, once they’ve all taken enough wine to take the edge off and with no food yet in sight. “You, er, you finding being human okay?”

Cas snorts and addresses his reply to his wine.

“It’s tiring and filthy and slow and painful,” he says. And softens as he glances at Kelly, some light in his eyes Dean doesn’t like. “But I suppose there are some…compensations?”

Cas swallows down the last of his wine without breaking eye-contact, which should be illegal. At least, it should be illegal that the person he’s looking at isn’t Dean.

From the way Sam shifts on his chair, clearing his throat and glancing at Dean, he’s noticed how weird it is, too. 

“We can find something positive in most changes,” Kelly says. “As long as we’re open to them. Ah. Good. The food.”

So Kelly has servants. Good to know. They bring in plates of some artfully arranged meal, thin slices of meat drizzled with a red sauce and strips of vegetable folded into something closer to sculpture than food. If this is how she feeds Cas, no wonder he’s got that air about him that he expects more from life, now. 

Dean’s distracted from trying the food by watching the way Cas cuts a piece of meat and takes it between his lips, lifting it from the tines of his fork. He wonders what else Cas has learned to expect out of life.

“And how exactly has Kelly been helping you to…transition to being human?” Dean asks.

Cas swallows, and that should be less interesting than it is, and fixes Dean with a look that says he’s being rude. Still, he answers.

“The food and housing is a good start,” he says. “It was significantly less pleasant being homeless.”

Which he wouldn’t have been if he’d made it to the Bunker, but Dean doesn’t bring that up right now. Instead, he waits for Cas to go on, which he does with a sinuous shoulder movement that might have been meant as a shrug.

“Kelly’s helped others who’ve lost their powers, or found their old roles changed. She knows how sometimes it can jar, to be trapped in one form and with only human means of interacting to hand.”

“Mean of interacting?” Sam asks, looking from Cas to Kelly.

Kelly takes up the answer when Cas stabs at another piece of meat and doesn’t meet Sam’s eyes.

“A Seraph thinks more in waves, in music and math and colors, than in words,” she says. “Sometimes, without his Grace to help power the translation, Castiel’s words get tangled up. You noticed the pens earlier.”

Sam nods, his food apparently forgotten, and Dean sees Cas swallow again. This time, he doesn’t think Cas is eating anything.

“Yeah, I saw that,” Sam says. “So, the equations help you get clear what you want to say?”

“No,” Cas says. And now he meets Sam’s eyes and it’s a challenge, even though Dean can’t imagine what the contest is. “The words for what I wanted to say don’t exist in English, and most other human languages I know are long dead. The equations give me a way to get across some of what I mean without being trapped by limiting words.”

“Exactly,” Kelly says. “It’s all about finding ways around limits where those limits can’t be accepted.”

“And who’ve you helped with this before?” Dean asks.

Kelly shrugs, her movement at least as graceful as Cas’. Dean wonders if he’s right about what she is, or if she’s something closer to what Cas used to be. 

“A few gods. Other beings. It doesn’t matter, Dean. The important thing is I’ve been able to help Castiel. And he’s safe and secure here. And you don’t need to worry.”

“And what’re you getting out of this?” he asks, because apparently he’s an ass, but he can’t help but wonder at the way Cas touched her earlier, or the way the two of them keep looking at each other now.

“Castiel is now a part of my court,” Kelly says, over her wine-glass, as though this is nothing. “Such as it is. The question is, Dean, are you going to try and take him away from me?”


	4. Chapter 4

So, she’s Fey after all. 

Dean smiles, his hand tightening round the knife he’s been given to eat with. It looks sharp enough. Might even be silver. He doesn’t have any iron on him. He does have Ruby’s knife, and that works on most everything. 

“You gonna try and stop me?” he asks. 

Cas turns a narrow-eyed look on Dean that stops any further words in his throat. He’s seen Cas look at people something like that before, with a dark certainty of punishment, but it’s a long time since he’s looked at Dean in anything like that way. 

“It isn’t up to you where I am or what I do, Dean,” Cas says. 

There’s an unspoken ‘anymore’ there, Dean thinks. He closes his mouth and presses his lips together, clenching his empty hand.

“A fairy, Cas?” he asks. “You’ve taken up with a fucking fairy? They’re as bad as demons!”

“No,” Cas says, inexorable. “They’re not.”

“You sit at my table and insult me?” Kelly asks.

She sits back in her chair, holding her wine glass with a relaxed grip, as though she doesn’t have two Hunters under her roof. That smile plays around the edges of her mouth again and she doesn’t look away from Dean. 

“Dean,” Sam says, and it’s a warning. 

“What? You want me to play nice? She’s got Cas under some kind of spell!”

“No. I really don’t,” Kelly says. “Castiel, have I bewitched you? Drugged you? In any way cast a spell upon you?”

“No, no and no,” Cas says. 

It has the sound of a ritual, with the cadence of their voices: both sure, hers lilting, Castiel’s setting each word down like stone in the ground.

It does nothing at all to ease Dean’s concerns.

“She’s got some hold over you,” he says, and tries not to think what that could be in any completely non-magical situation. “You telling me you really want to be here?”

He gestures around them and catches the way Sam’s eyebrows lift. 

“What?”

“Dean,” Sam says, “this place is beautiful. Why wouldn’t he want to be here?”

Dean feels his lip curl.

“Beauty isn’t everything,” he says. Growls, really.

Silence follows that, and now everyone’s looking at him. Not a one of them seems to be picking up what he’s putting down. Even Sam has this expression that says Dean’s acting the ass, and Kelly might have promised them they’d nothing to fear from her food but Dean should have known better than to trust one of the Fey. She must have drugged Sam. Good job Dean isn’t affected. One of them needs to see clearly.

“You’re right,” Cas says at last, and the other two switch their attention to him. 

Cas flashes a look and a partial smile at Kelly, who reaches her free hand across the corner of the table between them. Dean just about manages not to throw the knife when Cas takes it, gripping her fingers.

When Cas turns back to Dean, it’s with a lifted chin and a look in his eyes that Dean hasn’t seen since back before Cas walked into that lake. Pride. He thinks it’s pride. He didn’t even realize it had been missing.

“There’s a lot more than beauty,” Cas says. “There’s safety, and shelter, and nourishment. None of which I had on the streets. And there’s understanding. And acceptance. All of which I have here. And there’s assistance. And patience. Which I have found here. Tell me, Dean. Could I have found all of that if I’d come to you? Assuming I’d have made it that far.”

“Of course you fucking would,” Dean says, and isn’t sure what part of that he’s answering.

“Really?” Kelly asks, and tips her wineglass towards Sam. “With that other angel hiding inside your brother?” 

Cas is startled by that, if the jerk of his head around to look at Sam is any indication. Sam’s eyes widen a fraction, his lips parting, but he doesn’t get a word out before his spine straightens and his eyes flash blue.

“How can you see me?” Ezekiel asks Kelly. “Even Crowley didn’t see me.”

“Crowley?” Kelly asks, her mouth quirking. “I’ve had dealings with that one. Don’t be so sure he missed you, angel.”

Cas isn’t bolt upright, isn’t poised to fight or flee. Instead, he leans back, lounging again, and tips his head to the side. The hand still on the table, the one holding Kelly, is perhaps a fraction more tense that it was. 

“Who are you?” Cas asks, and shrugs one shoulder, that same rippling motion that makes Dean think Kelly’s been giving him movement lessons. “You appreciate my senses are somewhat…altered, these days.”

“Castiel,” Ezekiel says, and there seems to be regret there, for some reason. 

Cas raises an eyebrow. Just one. Dean wonders just how in control of his body this Fey has been teaching Cas to be.

“I’m fairly sure that’s my name,” Cas says. “Try again.”

“My name is Ezekiel-”

“No.”

Cas cuts him off like he’s slicing through his sentence with a sword. 

“I can assure you-”

“You can assure me all you want,” Cas says, “but you’re not Ezekiel.”

Cas doesn’t explain, and Ezekiel falls silent, regarding Cas warily. It’s an odd look on the guy. Dean’s got used to the certainty and refusal to budge, and watching Cas face off against a fellow angel like this, now Cas isn’t really an angel, is creepy.

Dean isn’t sure which side of this he should be on. 

Kelly breaks the silence, first draining her glass and then rising to reach the bottle. She lets go of Cas’ hand as she moves, and the slosh of wine into her glass eases some of the tension.

“Don’t speak lies under my roof,” she says lightly, almost playfully. “And don’t lie to Castiel. He doesn’t appreciate it.”

“I am not…” The angel wearing Sam cuts himself off this time, and glances at each one of them, his gaze settling back on Cas before he sighs and goes on. “As you will. Ezekiel died in the fall. But I am helping to heal Sam.”

“And your name?” Cas asks. Demands.

It isn’t the way he ordered other angels around, the few times Dean saw that. Cas was steel when he needed to be, but this is different. This is someone who knows obedience isn’t guaranteed and expects to get his way anyhow.

“Gadreel,” the angel says, and it’s dragged out. Reluctant.

Cas goes from lounging to attacking so fast that Dean’s brain glitches. 

The guy’s over the table and tackling Sam’s body full length to the floor in a heartbeat, his angel-blade appearing in his hand as he goes. The chair-back thuds to the ground, Sam’s skull bouncing on the tiled floor, and Cas has a knee digging into Sam’s ribs, a hand in his hair, pulling his head back, and that blade at his throat. There’s no give in his expression.

“Gadreel,” Cas says, the name too calm for the storm it seems to have unleashed. “The angel who let Lucifer into Eden.”

“It wasn’t like that, brother,” Gadreel says through Sam’s lips, and Dean’s going to need more than a few seconds to process that change of name. “I was tricked. I was loyal.”

“You destroyed everything,” Cas says. 

Dean swears he sees a line of blood along Sam’s throat.

“Cas!” he gets out, half out of his seat but with no clue how to get the two people he cares about most away from each other. “Cas, that’s Sam!”

“Destroyed everything how?” Kelly asks, swirling her wine around in its glass and not even seeming to be paying full attention. “Everything still appears to be here, Cupcake.”

Cupcake? No. Not the most important thing, here.

“It almost broke Heaven,” Cas says, that dark thread in his voice making Dean itch to pull the sword from his hand. 

“We’re almost in a glass house right here,” Kelly says. “The irony.”

And Cas blinks, and loses his tension, and surges back until he’s on his feet, looking down at Sam’s body. At Gadreel. 

“You have a point,” Cas tells Kelly. “You think I should listen to his side.”

“I think slitting Sam Winchester’s throat over this will come back and haunt you,” she says, while looking into her wine glass. “Um. And I generally do find listening before summarily executing people is a good move. Besides, we haven’t finished our meal.”

“Good point,” Cas says, as though that actually is the clincher. He points a finger a Gadreel. “You will explain.”

Gadreel, still on the floor and with a hand to his throat, nods. 

“Whatever you say, brother.”

Dean thinks he sees something shift in Cas’ eyes at being called ‘brother’, but he could be wrong. He isn’t sure of this Cas at all. 

He isn’t sure what to make of Kelly, sitting calmly in her chair and sipping her wine, but he’s damn sure Gadreel isn’t the only one with some explaining to do.


	5. Chapter 5

Desert arrives by the time Gadreel is done explaining, an explanation broken with pleas for Cas to believe him, to forgive him. 

Cas drinks his wine and says nothing. 

If Dean had never met Cas, the way the angel - former angel - is leaning back in his chair, his fingers tapping the rim of the wineglass when not actually drinking, would have him thinking Cas was no stranger to, well, all sorts of things. Confidence, drugs, sex. You name it. 

He’s seen Cas on drugs before, on drugs and sex, his body seemingly relaxed, but that wrung out, bitter version was nothing like this. This is Cas caught before he could break completely, and Cas taught that a human body can be trained like any weapon, used to advantage like any tactical move. And this is a Cas who’s learned that’s not all his body is for.

And, shit, is that what it is? Is this Cas with someone shoring him up? 

Dean scowls and listens to Gadreel speak of regret and punishment and sorrow, and hates himself that he wants Cas to be under a spell. Anything but accepting this is just Cas with support and acceptance. 

“Do you understand, brother?” Gadreel asks at last. 

His focus is entirely on Cas, who narrows his eyes and refuses him an answer. Dean has no idea what’s going on in that head of his. 

Kelly finally sets down her glass, which she’s managed to keep more or less full the whole time, despite drinking almost constantly. Fey must have a high tolerance, because she looks as sharp as she ever did. 

“You’ve given Castiel as lot to think about,” she says. “Rushing a response wouldn’t be fair, now, would it?”

Gadreel turns Sam’s head to her, blinking in apparent confusion, as though the idea anyone but Cas could have a word to say hadn’t occurred to him. Dean doesn’t get how the angel’s failed to see this Kelly’s hold over Cas, whatever form it actually takes.

“I can wait,” he says, slowly, as though testing each word to see if it will take his weight.

“Good,” Kelly says. “Then why not bring Sam back out to play? Might be a bit hard to skip the fact he’s missed dinner, though. I’m not a big believer in lying to people about their own status as an angelic container.”

“Sam cannot know-” Gadreel says, and sputters to a stop as Cas shifts in his seat.

It’s more a body stretch than it is anything else, but it pulls Gadreel up short.

“He says it’s dangerous, that the other angels’ll come after him,” Dean says. “That helping Sam makes him a target.”

“Being himself makes him a target,” Cas says, and he says it like a pronouncement. 

Dean thinks Gadreel’s spine is a little less straight, his shoulders a little slumped, and wonders how a guy who’s been locked up in heavenly solitary since Eden knows about Cas. What the Hell gossip floats round Heaven about Dean’s angel? 

Er. About an angel. About Cas.

“So, this is about keeping himself safe? It’s got nothing to do with Sam and me?” Dean asks. “Or you?”

He thinks Cas loses his control, just for a sliver of a fraction of a second, at that last bit.

“The only threat I could be is knowing he’s not Ezekiel,” Cas says. And tilts his head sideways. 

It slides along the high back of the chair, and somehow that looks…debauched. Not a word Dean would normally pair with Cas.

“If I’d made it to the Bunker, would I have been allowed to stay, I wonder.”

“Course you would-” Dean starts, and falters at the look on Gadreel’s face. “You… Cas, come on…”

“You will tell Sam Winchester that you’re using him as a bolt-hole,” Cas says. 

Kelly smiles, and leans across to pat Cas on the arm. Dean is getting a lot of practice at not throwing things. 

“There, now,” she says. “Gadreel, go and explain it all to Sam. I know you can do that. Castiel is not my first angel. And then I think you’d best stay out for a while whilst Sam has a chance to say his piece to Dean. Go on, now. Hop to it.”

And Gadreel, to Dean’s surprise, does just that.

 

*************************

“You helped an angel trick me,” Sam says, still not looking at Dean.

It’s about the hundreth time he’s said that in the last hour, ever since they were shown to a room with two beds in and told they were staying the night. Dean doesn’t even want to know about how they’re bags got here. If not for Cas’ quiet and somewhat disgusted insistence Dean should calm down and stop making a fuss, he’d already have tried that silver knife on Kelly and made a run for it.

“You were dying!” he says back. Again. “What was I supposed to do, Sam? Let you die?”

“Yes! I keep saying- Fuck’s sake, Dean, I told you. No more messing up the natural order, here. We try it, it just screws things worse.”

“Yeah, well, you dying ain’t in the plan. Sorry. Not happening. Not if I can stop it.”

Sam’s expression is part despairing, part pissed enough to take a swing at Dean and mean it. He sits with his hands clasped between his knees, as though he’s keeping them contained, away from harm. From temptation. 

“Wasn’t your call to make,” Sam says. 

They fall into silence, Dean pacing and Sam sitting. It lasts long enough Dean’s thinking of leaving, of walking out of the room and tracking down Cas and dragging him away to talk some sense into him.

The knock at the door stops him short. 

“Who is it?” he calls, before Sam’s had chance to do more than move his head.

He doesn’t wait for an answer before he crosses the room and yanks the door open, glare already in place. 

Kelly smiles at him, her hair spilling around her face and her nightgown spilling white lace all over the place. It’s… Well. On anyone else, it’d seem overdone. Ridiculous. Somehow, on her, it looks like it should dissolve into mist at the edges.

“You here to seduce us?” Dean asks, before he can stop himself.

Her smile grows, curling up at the edges in apparent delight.

“Both of you?” she asks. “At once? Seems a little…much. Besides, I rather think Castiel would sulk.”

She sails into the room as Dean tries to control his reaction, but he can feel the flush on his skin as he closes the door and turns round. Sam flicks a look at him that Dean can’t work out, and settles his attention on the Fey standing by the dresser, staring at a lamp as though it holds the secrets of all things.

“You here for a reason, or you just making sure we haven’t lifted the silver?” Dean asks. 

“Hmm? Oh, silver. Yes. You do rather like your silver, don’t you?” she says.

She doesn’t sound especially worried at the thought of Dean having silver. 

“So what are you doing?” Sam asks, and it feels like forgiveness, in its way, to have even verbal back-up.

Kelly doesn’t look at them, and Dean finds he’s grateful, because there’s something compelling about her gaze that he doesn’t want to think about. It draws at him the way a deep clearing does, or a rich swell of the ocean. Better she keeps inspecting her own furniture.

“Castiel holds you close in his heart,” she says, and moves on before either one of them can respond. “Clearly, you hold strong feelings for him, as well. I am concerned for his well-being.”

“You-?” Dean splutters and loses his words.

“We aren’t any harm to Cas,” Sam says, but there’s something off about his expression. “I mean, now we know about Gadreel, and he’s agreed to keep healing me, Cas can come back to the Bunker with us. He’ll be safe there.”

“Will he, now?” Kelly asks, and turns to face Dean. Her eyes meeting his is like being punched. “Will he be safe, Dean? Will he be cared for and understood? Supported? Because an angel losing his Grace, losing his wings and his eyes and his multi-faceted, many-planed existence, and being trapped within a shell of meat, is a lot more than him losing a few useful tricks. Do you get that? Do you think you can give him what he needs to transition? To thrive?”

“Do you?” Dean asks.

“I am doing just that,” she says. “I’ve eased others through something like this. Gods who’ve turned mortal. Fey who’ve left the realm and decided to throw their lot in with human lovers. And the humans never see it, that it’s effectively cutting off a limb.”

She laughs, and it’s lilting and lovely and sharp as a scalpel. 

“You humans, you think it’s a chance of address, and it’s cutting lumps of yourself out bloody, shredding most of what you are and letting it flake to the ground. He doesn’t need to tell me how impatient you are when he isn’t human enough for you. It’s there, in the edges of his stories, in the way he speaks about himself. Spoke, rather.”

Sam jumps in, his glance telling Dean to simmer down. 

“And you think we don’t get that? That Cas isn’t human?”

“I think you believe human is better,” Kelly says, “when it’s not. No. Don’t argue with me on this. Humans have many fine qualities, but so do dogs. So do cows and salmon and bees and roses. Would you want to become any one of those?”

Dean scowls.

“What? That doesn’t even make sense. Humans aren’t any of those things.”

“No,” Kelly says. “None of them are so arrogant as to believe an angel is less than they are. None of them expect an angel to bend himself to their expectations and leave his brilliance, his light behind, and to be fine with it, because they can’t see beyond the limits of their own species.”

“I have never tried to limit Cas,” Dean says, knowing he’s coming across as too heated.

Kelly takes a step closer, and it doesn’t matter she’s short enough she has to look up at him. Dean steps back. 

“You limit him just by expecting him to shape himself to your will, to your vision,” she says. “Castiel is a part of my Court. As such, he is under my protection, and that means I will protect him from any harm. Including from his own fascination with you.”

Dean sees Sam stand and move closer, but Kelly doesn’t even seem to notice. No way is Dean stupid enough to believe that.

“I know Castiel’s own kind have warned you away before,” she says. “I know you haven’t listened. I can respect the connection the two of you have, the love. Don’t argue. You aren’t subtle. But love is not the fine cure-all so many of your foolish species believe it is. And you aren’t bruising him more than you have already. You want Castiel? You have to prove yourself worthy.”

“Worthy…?” Dean starts to ask, but Kelly shakes her head and he falls silent.

“This is my ground,” she says, “and we operate by my rules. If you want him, you start tomorrow. For now, that’s all you need to decide. Do you want Castiel back enough to fight for him?”


	6. Chapter 6

Dean barely sleeps.

He doesn’t like the idea of closing his eyes in this place where a Fairy Queen has taken hold of Cas. She has to be a Queen, right? He’s read about Fairy Courts and their rulers: cruel and capricious and confident. And captivating.

She must have captivated Cas somehow. 

A line of poetry from some random English Lit class years back floats through his mind. 

‘Her hair was long, her foot was light.’

Kind of fits Kelly. 

Cas isn’t pale though, or alone, and maybe that’s what’s upsetting Dean more, if he really forces himself to face up to it. No. Instead of going along with some woman and having his life drained from him, Cas seems to have gained vibrancy, or at least not lost it the way Dean had thought he might as a human. He isn’t the twisted, bitter thing he was in that nightmare future.

Cas is kind of loitering, though. In a way. 

“Dean,” Sam says, his voice drifting out of the darkness of the room in a way that’s familiar after a life spent on the road. “You going to sleep at all? I can hear you thinking from over here.”

“Stop listening, then,” Dean says, and folds his arms over his chest. 

Lying on his back with his arms folded defiantly when no-one can see isn’t his most mature look, but screw it. It’s not every day a fairy runs off with his…with his Cas. 

“If I could stop, I would’ve done it already,” Sam says, and sighs, like it’s him that’s hurting. “Dean? Have I done…anything. You know. When Gadreel’s been at the wheel?”

“What?”

Dean’s mind stalls. 

Shit. He’s here agonizing over Cas being friends with some Fey and Sam’s worrying he’s hurt people.

“It’s not like when Meg went joy-riding in you. No deaths on your hands,” Dean says, and winces at his own lack of sensitivity. He rolls his head to the side to look in Sam’s direction, even though no way can Sam see that. “Look, all that’s happened is he’s healed you up a few times, all right? Maybe ganked some demons. No humans. I promise. He’s asleep or something most of the time, anyway.”

“Okay,” Sam says, after a beat. “But, Dean, you get why I’m pissed, right?”

Dean doesn’t, not really, but with Sam alive and here to be pissed at him he can afford to be generous.

“Sure,” he says. “Sure I do, Sam.”

“Right,” Sam says, and it’s not the sound of someone who’s massively convinced. “Just, it’s my life. You know? And I should have had a clear say in whether we tried to save it.”

Dean knows this is important. He does. Hell, enough people and creatures have thrown his bond with Sam at him over the years that he’s at least got the memo it’s a noticeable bond. He can’t help but think there’s something else in the words, though. Something’s lurking under them.

“You just talking about you, here, or this a Cas thing, too?” he asks.

“It’s both of us,” Sam says, sounding determined. “I mean it, Dean. You should never have agreed to this for me, and tricking me into it? Not cool. We need to talk about it properly, and you need to understand you can’t do anything like it again. You get that?”

Dean agrees, even though he isn’t sure he can ever agree to just letting Sam die. 

“But it’s Cas, too,” Sam says. “It’s his choice whether he leaves here or not. He’s not ours to order around.”

“Course he’s ours,” Dean says, even though he knows that’s not quite what Sam means. “And you’re saying I should just let the people I love leave me?”

Sam’s silence after that tells Dean he might have gone too far. 

“Me deciding to let death run its course had nothing to do with leaving you,” Sam says at last. “It was about me. Not you. And maybe it’s the same for Cas.”

“Bull,” Dean says. 

But a niggle of something wriggles around under his breastbone. 

“You really think he might be better off here than with us?”

“No, of course not,” Sam says, and now he’s the one who doesn’t sound convincing.

Dean opens his mouth to challenge his brother about it, and shut his mouth again. He finds it’s not something he wants to hear about, after all.

 

**************************

 

Cas looks even better in the morning than he did the day before.

He’s wearing those jeans again, and a deep blue shirt that Dean wants to take right back off him. And that’s a thought he won’t be sharing. 

“You forget what a comb’s for, Cas?” he asks, as he stops nearby.

Cas is standing in a patch of light, one of several spilling through the glass roof of Kelly’s orangery, and his eyes almost glow blue. Not in an angel way. No, Dean can see that Cas isn’t an angel anymore. It’s in the way he stands and in the air around him. But he doesn’t move quite like a human might, either. At least, not most humans. Maybe one trained in dance and other ways to use his body, and Dean has got to get control over his thoughts.

“No,” Cas says.

It takes Dean a moment to realize Cas is answering his question and not pulling Dean up on where his brain keeps taking him.

“Right. Good, then. Good job,” Dean says, and points at Cas before dropping his hand right back down to his side.

“You seem uncomfortable,” Cas says, but even with the words being so familiar to the way he’s used to Cas speaking, the delivery is off. 

This isn’t just a Cas who’s putting together clues about how Dean feels and presenting his hypothesis. This is a Cas who’s sure of his conclusion and not overly concerned about it. 

“There some reason I shouldn’t be?” Dean asks, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice. “You’re holed up with a fucking Fey, Cas!”

“Yes. So you said already,” Cas says, narrowing his eyes and tilting his head. “Why is this a problem?”

Dean needs to get Cas to understand this, and it would be so much easier if he really understood it himself. He goes with the obvious.

“The Fey are tricky, all right? And they’re powerful. I’ve come up against them before and I’ve read more. They use people, Cas!”

For a few precious moment, Cas is silent, as though Dean’s words are actually sinking in. Then, he shakes his head and his lips curl up at the corners. It’s almost lazy. 

It makes Dean want to shout and grab him and kiss him-

He is seriously getting confused, here. This need to kiss Cas has been there for a long time, but knowing Cas is human… Dean’s spent time thinking how, when they found Cas, they’d finally be able to talk, to see if Cas had any interest. Once he was recovered and on his feet.

Instead, he’s found a Cas who’s already on his feet, and who has more confidence about it than Dean knows what to do with.

“How’s it funny?” he demands, and shoves his hands deep in his pockets to keep himself from taking hold of Cas’ shoulders.

“I’m not people, Dean. Not the way you mean it. I’m an angel.”

“You’re not an angel, now! You’re human,” Dean says.

Cas just stares at him.

“Well?” Dean tries. “You are. You said your Grace was gone.”

“Yes,” Cas says. It sounds like a concession. “But I’ve never just been a human with Grace adding on super-powers. I’m a Seraph, Dean, and I’ll always be a Seraph, whatever happens to my wings or to my connection to Heaven.”

Cas steps forward, and Dean finds himself looking at Cas from something like their old distance. Cas’ eyes really are still very blue. They’re also very clear and focused. No sign of him being drugged, so that’s definitely out.

“Why does it upset you so much that I’ve found a place here? You say the Fey use people. Maybe you even think I count, after all. But you forget, I’ve dealt with the Fey more than once, and I’ve a lot more knowledge than you can find in a few books. Kelly is more my kind than you are, in many respects.”

Dean splutters, and Cas takes another step. This time, it’s step back or end up pressed chest-to-chest. Dean steps back.

“She knows what it’s like to live as a human from the outside, the same way I need to learn it,” Cas says. “And she reminds me that being human isn’t the same as being better. These are things I need to hear, Dean. You’re right. The Fey are dangerous. But I was dangerous. I was more dangerous than almost anything you’ve hunted, so shouldn’t you have walked away from me long ago?”

Dean’s mouth is dry. Cas is sucking every bit of willpower out of him, just by speaking in that measured tone and holding his gaze. And looking like he’s been dressed ready to seduce rich people out of their money. 

“You can walk away now,” Cas says. “If you’re so perturbed by Kelly, by my relationship with her, you can walk away and leave me. I’ll be fine. Much better than I would have been on my own.”

Dean dredges up just enough spit to get words to form, even though they rattle on the way out of his throat.

“You want me to walk away?” he asks. 

He thinks he feels fear, then, as Cas stares at him, considering. 

The relief when Cas shakes his head is dizzying.

“No.”

The angel steps back, turning just enough that he’s looking over Dean’s shoulder. He sounds almost regretful.

“No, I don’t want you to walk away. But I won’t follow after you like I have done before. I can’t, Dean. I came too close to losing myself to risk being no more than your shadow.”

And without a further word, Cas walks out.

**Author's Note:**

> Do let me know if you like anything. Comments are candy. 
> 
> Come say hi on tumblr. I'm [humanformdragon](http://humanformdragon.tumblr.com/).


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